Squirrel causes over 10,000 people to lose power in Virginia

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More than 10,000 people in eastern Virginia were plunged into darkness by a power outage that officials said was caused by a squirrel.

Residents of Kempsville, a town in Virginia Beach, were sent into darkness just before 9am on Thursday when a transformer in the neighbourhood shut down.

Although power was restored by 10am, according to WAVY-TV, as many as 10,000 people were affected by the unexpected loss of electricity.

Officials said the squirrel was able to get inside an electricity substation, where it touched a transformer that short-circuited – causing the outage.

“The squirrel got between a circuit breaker and a transformer causing a power surge that made the transformer fail,” Bonita Billingsley Harris, a spokesperson for Dominion Energy, told 13NewsNow.

All of the substations operated by the energy company in Virginia Beach have squirrel guards, which did not stop the small rodent – who was thought to have died as a result – from causing mayhem.

Several schools lost power but lessons were able to resume as normal when power was restored on Thursday morning, WAVY-TV said.

Dominion Energy told the news station that the outage stretched from Kempsville to the King’s Grant neighbourhood – about 28 miles away.

Squirrels are well known for causing power outages across the US, with one energy firm – Entergy – finding in 2020 that squirrels were responsible for 15,000 of animal-related outages across the five states it serves.

Further outages are not expected in the Virginia Beach area following repair work, said Ms Harris.